Appraisal - Understanding The Job Purpose and Key Result Areas

Appraisal - Understanding the Job Purpose
and Key Result Areas

As part of creating an effective appraisal process, you need to understand and accurately
record the job purpose and key result areas.
It is vital to spend some thinking time really appreciating what the individual has to do in
their job.
Make no assumptions at this stage; bear in mind that:
• i) You may know the appraisee’s job, you may have held the job yourself, but with
the rate of change impacting on us all, you cannot make assumptions about what they
find easy/hard and the systems and constraints placed upon them.
• ii) Remember - they are not you and when you did their job you did not have you as a
manager. You need to obtain feedback on your performance.
Job Purpose
Start by defining the purpose of the job. This is a concise definition of why the job exists at
all. An example for a Management Trainer is:
To Develop all Middle

Managers to Competency
Level 3
Remember to focus on why the job exists and not on what the person does. We often tell
people what we do (“I fix machinery”) or what our job title is (“I’m an Engineer”) but we do
not state why our job exists, which is the vital one (“I keep the plant operating”).
Key Result Areas

Once the job purpose is clear, you can then identify five or six areas in which results must be
achieved if the job purpose is to be fulfilled. These are the broad areas within a job that
change little from year to year.
Everyone’s job can be broken into key result areas (KRA). For the management trainer, key
result areas could be:
Design of solutions
Delivery of solutions
Evaluation of solutions
Budgets
Client satisfaction
Innovation
Copyright: The Development Company 1 (Appraisal KRA)

The Development Company
Tel: +44 (0) 1604 810801 Email: training@thedevco.com Website: www.thedevco.com
The KRA approach has three main advantages:
1. Areas such as innovation, client response time and staff development are included
rather than being overlooked.
2. It is the first stage of objective setting.
3. It makes it easier to assess current performance.
The key result areas of a Human Resource Specialist may be:
Staffing
Employee relations
Employee development
Compensation planning and
administration
Policy development
Benefits administration
Career development
Statutory compliance
Human Resource information systems
Here is a list of key result areas which may appear in various jobs from one organisation to
another:
General Management/Senior Executive
Internal operations
Market development
Profitability
Organisational structure
Organisational vision and mission
Asset and liability management
Productivity
Financial strategy
Business development
Technology
Customer satisfaction
Community relations
Regulatory compliance

Finance and Accounting
Credit referencing
Management information
Capital expenditure
Security
Financial analysis
Cost control
Internal audit
Regulatory reporting
Credit control
Financial records
Payroll
Cashflow forecasting
Budgeting
Costing
Sales
New business acquisition

Territory management
Customer care
Lead generation
Lead follow up (internal and
external)
Account management
Customer retention
Interpersonal skills
Negotiating skills
Product knowledge
Sales forecasting

Manufacturing
Stock control
Maintenance
Labour relations
Waste
Reworks
Productivity
Health and Safety
Quality control
Record keeping
Marketing
Advertising
Promotional strategy
Pricing
Market research
Field support
Marketing materials
Media relations
Sales support
Agency relations

Secretarial, Clerical and Administrative
Correspondence
Filing
Records management
Administrative support
Internal customer relations
Equipment maintenance
Forms administration
Scheduling
Supply maintenance and
purchasing
Telephone coverage
Project support
Finally, key result areas for everyone in an organisation are:
Personal development
Professional development
Internal and external
customer satisfaction
Public relations
Communication – oral and
written
Interdepartmental relations
Project management
Once the key result areas have been established, you can then set specific objectives for an
individual within each accountability area.

How Should Goals and Targets be Agreed?
A major part of an appraisal is the agreeing of goals and targets for the following period. The
time spent before and during the appraisal review getting these right will ensure a better
quality and more objective assessment process at the next and subsequent reviews.
Ineffective or badly worded goals and targets are a common problem in appraisal reviews and
can lead to ambiguous expectations, unexpected results and quite costly inefficiencies within
the organisation. The secret is to identify what it is that needs measuring and to state the
measurement in "output" terms rather than in "input" terms. That means goals and targets
should be about results not the processes and the procedures that need to be followed in order
to achieve those results.
For instance, requiring someone to attend six meetings during the year or visit twelve
potential new customers per month are both specific targets but where is the benefit to the
business in those targets being met? Anyone can attend meetings or visit people
but what about the outcome of those meetings and visits?
The value of objectives lies in making it clear what the staff member is to achieve during the
reporting period. To ensure the objectives are clear, they should be:
• Within the staff member's control
• Realistic in terms of skills and experience
• Important and not simply easy to measure
A method to ensure that goals and targets are of good quality is to use the SMART model:
S pecific
M easurable
A chievable
R ealistic
T imebound

SMART Objectives in Appraisal
Specific
Goals and targets should have a clear link to the organisational plan
Measurable
All goals and targets should contain something to measure them by
The measurements should be quantitative and qualitative
Agreed
Both parties need to agree the objective. It should not be imposed
Realistic
The realism should be in terms of the abilities and potentials of the individual
coupled with the needs of the organisation. The measures should be attainable
within the required time period and with the resources available
Timebound
The objectives should be achievable within an agreed timescale.
Objectives should be measured in output

If you cannot measure an objective for an individual, you must ask the question: Why does
the role exist at all?
Here are some ideas about measurables:
Quantity
Number of units produced/published/sent/received/processed/deadlines

Calls per hour/day/week
New products introduced
Grievances per 100 employees
Staff turnover
Customer complaints and compliments
Error rate or reworks
Returned goods
Sales increased
Profit increased
Increase in market share

Cost
Variance against budget

£’s spent
Profit
Waste
Overtime incurred
Speed
Time
Reduction in number of minutes/hours/days etc.

Deadlines and schedules met
Average call response time
Projects completed per week/month etc.
Number of minutes between customers
Qualitative
Accuracy
Customer satisfaction
Repeat business
Mistakes
Reworks/repairs
Therefore:
Key Result Area = Sales
Objective = Sell x new product to customers
Measure = Number of units sold per new

customer whilst maintaining gross profit level of 25


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Appraisal - Understanding the Job Purpose

and Key Result Areas

Make no assumptions at this stage; bear in mind that:

To Develop all Middle

Key Result Areas

Copyright: The Development Company 1 (Appraisal KRA)

The key result areas of a Human Resource Specialist may be:

General Management/Senior Executive

Copyright: The Development Company 2 (Appraisal KRA)

New business acquisition

Copyright: The Development Company 3 (Appraisal KRA)

Copyright: The Development Company 4 (Appraisal KRA)

Finally, key result areas for everyone in an organisation are:

Copyright: The Development Company 5 (Appraisal KRA)

• Within the staff member's control

• Realistic in terms of skills and experience

• Important and not simply easy to measure

Copyright: The Development Company 6 (Appraisal KRA)

All goals and targets should contain something to measure them by

The measurements should be quantitative and qualitative

Both parties need to agree the objective. It should not be imposed

The objectives should be achievable within an agreed timescale.

Objectives should be measured in output

Here are some ideas about measurables:

Number of units produced/published/sent/received/processed/deadlines

Copyright: The Development Company 7 (Appraisal KRA)

Variance against budget

Reduction in number of minutes/hours/days etc.

Key Result Area = Sales

Objective = Sell x new product to customers

Measure = Number of units sold per new

Copyright: The Development Company 8 (Appraisal KRA)

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